Religious in the National Debate

• "Every white man for himself; women, children and minorities be damned!"
• "It's all the fault of the government spending all the money on those illegal aliens."
• "We couldn't educate the poor or allow them to have health care, they don't deserve it because of their laziness and besides it might take some of mine."
• "The gays caused my divorce."

Bishop Rickel's Blog has a new posting on "Prosperity, A sermon based on Mark 10:17-31". The passage from Mark is the story of Jesus with the Rich Young Man. I commented there, but felt that my comment fit in my blog here too.

The supposed religious are sure a closed-minded selfish bunch, in spite of the readings such as the one that Bishop Rickel's good sermon is based on. They keep yelling that it is a zero-sum game. Anything that "they" get means that I get less. "We have to stop those Muslims, homosexuals and aliens from getting anything from us."

But what if cooperation actually leads to everyone being better off. In economics it's called "gains from trade". Everyone is better off if we all work together with our specialties and trade.

Now let's look at the big picture. We can all be better off if everyone can do their best. If anyone is under-educated or is excluded from health care, they are not only worse off because of their misfortune, but we are all worse off because they can not participate in the cooperative efforts benefiting everyone

We are currently watching our supposed leaders fight out the healthcare reform. It seems that there is a lot of zero-sum-game arguing going on. It also looks like the religious are mostly on the wrong side of the argument. I think back to the history of Europe and the wars of religion and don't see much hope for our nation. I'm not sure how God helps. He seems to be used to limit rational discussion.

Gary